


Too Little, Too Late

by Rodetta



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Death, Drabble, F/M, Sad, Unrequited Love, except not at all, the author is sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 19:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13417932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodetta/pseuds/Rodetta
Summary: Even those who seem to be immortal aren’t safe in the Commonwealth.Deacon remembers a time that Fixer had laughed at that- used it as a reason why fighting a pack of death claws didn’t seem like such a bad idea. She said the Commonwealth picks you up, chews you around, and spits you back out without your armor on- and not even the best of the best were safe from that.Now, he wonders if she’d known she meant herself, too.





	Too Little, Too Late

It’d never sunk in, before.

As Deacon would protect his precious food from Fixer’s mangy mutt with his body, and Fixer’s laugh would be ringing in his ears- he never got it. Her eyes would be shining bright with mirth as she struggled to breathe, calling Dogmeat in short breaths to try to save Deacon from his fate. Dogmeat, on his part, seemed more happy to antagonize Deacon for Fixer’s amusement than he was fixated on the food. A peace offering sat discarded and forgotten a few paces behind the pooch. When Deacon braved a chance to look up from his defensive position- he’d understood why. Seeing Fixer that happy? That content, to just be laughing at a hungry pup? He’d be honored to defend his prize from Dogmeat any day. 

Because the truth was, while Fixer was a hoot and a half, she’d never been happy. Deacon couldn’t blame her. Not after that night where he found her sober-faced but definitely not sober, and she was holding toy blocks in her hands and told him the story. She told him everything. She was a woman displaced from her world into something viscous and ugly- honestly, upon hearing it, he was surprised Fixer was able to function at all. 

Your world is exploding in bombs, so you rush to safety. You’ve been told you’ll be safe there- you can live there. Together, with your loved ones- only to be tricked. You’re frozen, for two hundred years, and you awake just to see someone murder your husband and take your child. You’re powerless, can’t fight. You fall asleep because that’s what they make you do. You go dark and cold again- until you wake up, however much later. You’re the only one left, and you’re alone in a much different world than the one you left. 

For half a second when she finished telling him, he wanted to laugh and give her props for really one-upping his stories this time. He didn’t, because the look in her eyes as she held those blocks was real. He was a good actor. He couldn’t act that, though. It was one of those rare moments she wasn’t grinning and calling out jokes, one of those where she wasn’t looking for the bright side. That night? She was just the person underneath it all trying to make sense of a big fat nuclear wasteland mess. 

Deacon tried not to- because she was the same person. She’d always been that person, she was just strong and didn’t let it hang her up the way it should have. Yet, if he was honest for once in his life, he never saw her the same way after that. He just kept seeing flashes of what she must have been in pre-war times. She must have been a sight. 

Fixer didn’t act like she was pre-war. The most you’d notice is obscure references she’d laugh about, things that folks these days don’t always understand the first time. She clubbed heads together like it was nothing, would stab someone in the stomach as she shot another raider’s head off in the distance and brush herself off just fine. That part…gave him pause. But for whatever she didn’t act like, he knew there was a part of her that was pre-war. 

The caring part.

He really liked that part, believe you him, but Deacon hadn’t come across a lot of folks like her. Fixer was just that- fixer. She saw people who’d been living in the Commonwealth their whole lives and would just extend her hand to them. Anybody that threw a request at her- she’d do her damndest to help. Fixer hand-built Sanctuary from the ground up (on top of some of the broken parts), and now it was a real place. Like, people knew about it. Sanctuary, that place built by the General of the Minutemen. A place that was safe, and good. Good trading, good people, good defenses. You were welcome there. 

It had been home for her. She made it a home for others.

And all these good things she’d done, all the times she called his bullshit with a wink and a one-upper, all the times she stepped up and helped her friends or fixed up the commonwealth to be a better place- it never sunk in. 

It never sunk in when she would look at him with her head tilted, her genuine smile as she patted his shoulder and told him she was his friend and she’d never stop putting up with his bullshit. The time that she showed off the bunker she’d built and had reserved just for him, just for when the railroad brought him close by so he always knew he had safe harbor in Sanctuary. It’d had pre-war mags that had SURVIVED, even a few books with only a few pages damaged. A dresser full of new and bizarre potential combinations of new disguises- a gentle nod that she knew he’d always need them, always want to be able to slip on another face.  
It never sunk in even as her strength finally failed her as the Institute went up in flames, and she’d reached for his hand to comfort her, with tears in her eyes but her chin still high, and she never let him go. 

No. Everything that Fixer was and is, everything that they had been and were- none of it had ever made him realize the reality he’d been hiding from. 

His sunglasses were his first line of defense. Deacon never went a day without them. He’d taken them off that day, though. 

As Preston brought Fixer home, Deacon had stepped out into the street. His gaze raked across them all- the settlers trailing behind the Minutemen in silence. He’d seen Preston’s soft nod, been barely able to return it. He’d fell in line beside the man. The man that had convinced Fixer she could be something to the people of the Commonwealth, that she’d make a difference. 

As he looked at her, he’d never felt a chill go down his spine so quickly and coldly. Every ounce of him seemed to drain of life until he was probably as cold as she was- his Fixer. Piper had always called her Blue because of the Vault Suit. The name had never before been so fitting, though. 

Her skin was pale. Her lips were blue and broken. Bruises littered her neck and shoulders- but that wasn’t much of anything new. It’d been rare to see Fixer with only a few of those healing at a time. She’d been good. But she’d been careless, too. 

It was odd, to look at her, to see the neatly placed bandana around her head that covered the single bullet that had ended such a woman’s life. 

Preston said, weeks later, tired and cold himself as he sat at the bar, that the image would never leave him. He’d be haunted by it for the rest of his life. He’d watched as Fixer was stopped dead in her tracks- as she just fell. A quick, clean death that almost was unfitting for such a soldier. She’d survived the Institute, Super Mutants, Alpha Deathclaws, Psychos in power armor with mini nukes- and she’d been stopped by one bullet. 

A reminder…that even the best of them were mortal. A sucker punch to Deacon- who, at that moment, had been so good at disguising himself, that he hadn’t even realized until he was staring at a cold corpse that would never again have tears rolling down her cheeks and shoulders rolling from her uncontrollable laughter- 

Deacon had loved her. He’d been so in love with her. 

He’d never thought he could feel like he was dying all over again, but he was. His heart stopped. Deacon had been so good at hiding it that it wasn’t until his knees physically gave out from the wash of devastating pain that racked his chest that he even knew the truth. 

 

He’d fucking been in love with her. And now, after all that was said and done? 

He’d buried her, just like he did Barbara. This time, though, Synth Shaun looked up at him as people shared stories of the great General.

“What do I do now?” The child gazes across the main courtyard. “Both father and mother are gone.”

Deacon isn’t good with anything. He isn’t good at all. His gaze meets Dogmeat’s, who’s curled up in front of fixer’s corpse- staring sadly. He paws at her once, wags his tail when he thinks she responds- but it does, just as Hope dies, as people swarm the market and hear the words of the Minutemen. 

Fixer hadnt been able to look Shaun in the eyes and leave him. He wasn’t Shaun, really- and she’d told him so. She’d told him that he was a little boy with someone else’s memories. A little boy who would probably never grow up. She’d held his hands and smiled at him, telling him that she’d still be his mother if he wanted that.  
Shaun had wanted that. Fixer fixed him up a room in her house. She brought back toys and games for him each time she went out- and Shaun, he stopped being nervous when she left because she always came back. Fixer had always come back. 

“You stick with me.” The words are out before Deacon could even think them first. He panics, just a moment, before something slides into place and he nods. “Yeah. That’d be fine. Your mom had a lot of friends, Shaun. We’re here for you.”  
He wasn’t a dad. He’d never been anything. Why he thought he could be anything like a guardian for Shaun, he didn’t know. He couldn’t let the boy flounder about though- not if he could do something. He was fairly certain he could convince Piper to keep him safe when Deacon was busy…

The kid looks up at him with those wide, teary eyes. Shaun doesnt cry but he sniffles an awful lot. “Are they going to miss her?”  
Deacon opens his mouth, and then closes it. There wasn’t a word for it. They were going to do more than miss her. There’d never been anyone like Fixer- and there probably wouldn’t be again. If there was anything that group of misfits she kept picking up across the Commonwealth could agree on- it was that Fixer was pretty damn irreplaceable. 

Deacon looks away from the kid. He scans the courtyard, looks at all those people out there. Hancock isn’t among them. Deacon doesn’t know if he had mayor duties to attend, or if it was because the two of them were peas in a pod. Things get bad you just go the opposite way.  
Deacon wouldn’t run into the ghoul for weeks afterward. Hancock was higher than Deacon had ever witnessed -which was saying something- and when he tried asking about it all, Hancock had grinned and waved his hand. Dismissive.  
“Real shame.” He’d muttered. “Sunshine was a good one.”  
The ghoul had sauntered off without another thought- and all Deacon could think of was that silly song Fixer used to hum whenever Hancock said her nickname.  
Please don’t take his sunshine away~

“Yeah,” he finally breathes. “Yeah, kid. They’re gonna miss her. We’re all gonna.”

Preston says some meaningless words before the sound off starts. Shaun suddenly reaches into his pocket, producing a folded piece of paper. He seemed to hesistate, before finally unfolding it and handing it to Deacon.

He carefully accepts it. It’s a drawing- of all of them. Sole, and Shaun, plus Hancock and Preston- dogmeat…some are still just stick figures, with nothing to tell who they were supposed to be.  
He glances at the kid who meets his gaze. 

“I didn’t have enough time.” He says. 

Deacon knows he means more than the drawing. He nods. He hesitates- but then places one sturdy hand on Shaun’s shoulder.

“Me neither, kid.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I am apparently only capable of posting things I write on my phone at 3 am. 
> 
> I hope you liked it, please let me know if so. I’m tempted to write more of this, but unsure if it would just be a further take on deacon + trying to be a dad to Synth Shaun, or if it’d be like a prequel to when Fixer was alive. Or maybe even a retelling where sole lives after all. (But that ain’t realistic) 
> 
> Find me on tumblr, same name as here! Thank you so so much for reading <3
> 
> OH, and you have no idea how mad I am that this came out exactly to 1998 words. One less and it would have been perfect


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